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Friday, May 02, 2014

Travel Time - Page 2

We were on the road sniffling, sneezing, coughing and doing the "ayoo," "amma." all the way out of Texas seeing the tumbleweeds cross our path often times. Babs took a nice long nap and was ready to see the Texas country side disappearing into the early winter darkness. We stopped for dinner and Babs got her hour long movie time which had the car illuminated as we drove through pitch darkness otherwise into New Mexico (State #2).

On our way family from CA called and suggested that the weather going north seemed fine and that we should take a break at Farmington, NM for the night. It was another 500 miles away and we drove through the night to Albuquerque to Santa Fe and then through some real wilderness into Farmington. En route we saw snow and ice accumulation but nothing else. We were not sure if we were on plains or on mountains.

We took a break at Farmington around 3.30am local time which was 4.30am Dallas time. We had been driving for some 15 plus hours. Sanjana was in deep sleep when we checked into a hotel and hit the sack hard.

The next morning we were up early, by 7.00am and we were out after breakfast and cleaning up at 9.00am. On the road the family suggested we do Monument Valley which was not a long drive and then settle for the night at Moab. We thought it was a fine decision, from having no plans, we actually had one now. So we drove through some of the most beautiful landscape ever seen. It was red, brown, little trees, actually no tress just shrubs and bare and yet beautiful. I told myself that this is probably how moon or mars would look. the rock formations were amazing, Babs and I played the "what does this rock look like to you" game. It was fun and thrilling.

We realized that on the small state route we were driving, if you saw a Cop car drive up on your side of the road, it meant pull over out of the road as a vehicle carrying a big pipe wider than one lane was coming up and it will not stop for you. We learnt it after the first cop gave us the glaring for a life time.

We stopped to have lunch at a small town. We still had the home packed lunch, so G and I ate that while Babs enjoyed some fast food and then we headed into Utah (State #3).

We got to the entrance of Monument Valley and took the wrong turn and drove through some more wilderness. We realized that we were not on track when the road abruptly came to an end. So we lugged ourselves back to the right place and words cannot describe the beauty that only nature can create. We decided to brave the drive on the untamed terrain in our cute little Prius who was awesome. She can do everything a normal car can do. After some photo shoot we headed back out and started our journey towards Moab.

Family in CA booked our stay for the night there and we settled into the hotel room before heading out for dinner. We wanted to eat some fresh dinner, and what more to remind us of home than a Mexican restaurant. Of course Mexican in Utah tasted different and we missed the Tex-Mex. Babs and G shared a bed because Amma dead was too tired and slept by 8.30pm while daddy-daughter saw some TV before calling it a night.